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Thursday, January 16, 2014

#874: Fred Leuchter

The inclusion criterion for gaining an entry in this Encyclopedia
is being a loon – evil or fraud, for
instance, won’t do, even if such behavior may occasionally be hard to
distinguish from lunacy (especially since these qualities are not mutually
exclusive). But I strongly suspect we’ll have to give Matthew Lesko a pass if we stick to those criteria.

Frederick "Fred" A. Leuchter, Jr. is a no-brainer,
however. Leuchter is an alleged expert in execution technology (though he has no training in the various
sciences), manufacturer of electric chairs, and author of forensic Holocaust
denial material. Indeed, Leuchter is responsible for most of the forensic quasi-research
commonly cited as evidence by Holocaust denialists.
In 1988 Leuchter was hired by Holocaust denial celebrity (but Canadian) Ernst Zündel to investigate whether the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps could have
been used for mass extermination, and concluded – in the infamous The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report
on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland
– that they could not have been. Of course, Leuchter has – to emphasize yet
again – no relevant scientific background for making the claim, but that, of
course, is generally not a barrier when you have a good conspiracy theory. The
report had a non-negligible impact on his career, and in 1999 he became the
subject of the Errol Morris documentary “Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.”.
A succinct criticism of his report can be found here (also here).

In other words, following his report Leuchter became
something of a bigshot in the Holocaust denial community,
and the fact that his conclusions have been rather thoroughly refuted doesn’t
prevent him from repeating them or the conspiracy theories that inevitably comes with Holocaust denial. Leuchter has, predictably, blamed
criticism of his work on an “international cabal... those who have unjustly
attacked me and violated my rights... the Klarsfelds, Shapiros, and Kahns of
the world.”

Diagnosis: Maybe there is hope,
but probably not for Leuchter, who is irrevocably mired in self-aggrandizing
delusions and lack of analytic skills. His influence has been substantial, and continues
to be frightening.